


The Adaar Experience

by Rodimiss



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, and other facets of the adaar life surrounded by humans, having horns is inconvenient sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 22:09:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6395848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodimiss/pseuds/Rodimiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ra Adaar is qunari, Vashoth, and here are her reminders - some funny (horns and curtains and cobwebs) and some not (the Qun and Orlesian insults and Corypheus) - as though she could forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Adaar Experience

**Author's Note:**

> loosely inspired by a 1 am thought and conversation with a friend. fic is on tumblr [here,](http://wardencommanderrodimiss.tumblr.com/post/141858563414/the-adaar-experience) and that post links to the thoughts that started this.

Ra wakes up slowly and finds herself staring at the ceiling of a house. She hasn’t slept in a house in months and months and while she tries to catch up her memories to the situation – hole in the sky, mark on her hand – she realizes there’s a few blankets pillowed beneath her head, around her horns, propping her up high enough to lay on her back. Her left horn still rips the sheets when she sits up, and the blankets are all tangled around her right.

 

“I have to ask,” Varric says, “but I spent three years with Qunari all around in Kirkwall, and I’ve always wondered: how do you sleep? With the horns?”

“We close our eyes at night like anyone else,” Ra deadpans, and she relishes the smile that she draws out of the dwarf.

“No, but seriously.”

 

She ducks to enter Josephine’s office in the chantry but starts to straighten up too soon and the tip of her horns don’t clear the doorframe. _"Vashedan!”_

“Are you all right, Herald?” Josephine asks, starting to rise, and Ra waves her down.

“Just acclimating myself with the place,” she says, and smiles.

 

Ra bends double to enter Leliana’s tent out in front of the chantry. She starts to forget where she is during the conversation, starts to straighten up, and she has to duck again when her horns brush the fabric. She remembers Josephine’s office when she leaves, crouching low to stop from dragging the entire tent down after her.

 

“Solas, do I have leaves stuck on my horns?”

 

“I’m sorry,” Ra says, “but – you want me to go to Val Royeaux, to – convince the clerics that I’m _not scary?”_ Even in the war room with its high ceiling, she still hunches, and she straightens herself up and stares down at Cullen and Cassandra. Leliana’s stare almost makes her seem like she still stands on an equal level. Josephine clears her throat from somewhere to her right. “Do I have to wear one of those masks?”

“No,” Josephine says.

“I do not think you would be able to,” Cassandra says.

They’re learning.

 

“For every time I hear the word _ox_ uttered in my presence, I’m going to buy myself a drink when we get back to Haven.”

“I fear you will only poison yourself,” Solas says, and Varric laughs. Cassandra sighs.

“For every time I hear _rabbit_ or _knife-ear,_ I’ll punch the shit who said it.”

“That will not be necessary,” Solas says, but Ra thinks she might have caught the wisp of a smile.

 

“Solas, do I have cobwebs on my horns?”

“Yes; and Cassandra has many in her hair.”

 

“So, Bull: I asked Adaar, and she didn’t give a straight answer, but how do you Qunari sleep?”

“Varric, we’ve been traveling together for months – surely you’ve woken up some night and just looked over?”

Iron Bull chuckles, a deep, rumbling sound. “See, no, your problem is you asked her how Qunari sleep, but she’s not Qunari.”

“Hold up,” Ra says. “Varric, I do _ever so deeply_ apologize. I’m Vashoth: we sleep, presumably, like everyone else does – close our eyes, preferably when it’s dark. _Tal-_ Vashoth do the same. _Qunari,_ as far as I am aware, do not sleep, but enter an energy-saving trace that focuses their brainpower into figuring out the best way to conquer and enslave general populaces.”

Varric raises his eyebrows. Bull sighs. Krem laughs – Ra’s never met a ‘Vint that she didn’t hate, but she might have found a good place to start changing that.

“This might be why you cut out my people’s tongues,” she says, and Bull looks at her, and she sets a scraggly bush on fire. “Saarebas.”

It’s a testament to whatever training that Ben-Hassrath go through that Bull’s face doesn’t even twitch.

 

“But don’t worry, I’ll protect you,” Dorian says, and Ra’s horns nearly scrape the dungeon ceiling when she draws herself up to her full height and stares down at him, slowly raising an eyebrow. He stares back, unperturbed.

She would have laughed, were their situation not so fucked up, and were it not almost sweet that he said that.

 

Shredded tapestries still cling to the castle walls, layered by dirt and dust. “And I thought this place had no sense of interior design to begin with,” Dorian says, and Ra wants to snap at him to just _shut up_ with the jokes, but she might hate the silence more. Cassandra doesn’t even make a sound of disgust like she always does for Varric’s jokes.

Resistance catches on her right horn and her head is pulled backwards and there is a loud, terrifying, silence-breaking _clang_ as the tapestry caught up on her horn crashes to the ground, rod and all. Ra isn’t sure how it’s tangled and tugging at the fabric doesn’t get it loose. “Here,” Solas says, and Ra bows her head to let him free her.

“You never did answer my question about sleep,” Varric says, and his grin is fleeting and doesn’t reach his red-wisped eyes.

“Sorry,” Ra says, and she doesn’t mean the question that was on its way to being a running joke.

 

“You have cobwebs on your horns,” Solas says.

“That probably made a great impression on the King of Ferelden,” Ra says. 

“So are those future cobwebs?” Varric asks. “From the future?”

“I’m going to go dunk my head in the lake,” Ra says, hoping that it will rid her of more than the cobwebs.

 

“How often do you have to walk through a doorway sideways?” Ra asks, and Bull laughs.

“More than I care to admit.”

 

“So this place was built by ancient elves?” Ra asks, and Solas nods.

“Then it was held and abandoned by humans, until it comes to you.”

“Elves.” She looks around, all the broken stone walls and crumbled floors. “Are there any spirits here who I would offend if I put in an order to make all the doorways taller?”

“In the Fade, where they dwell, the world is ever-changing,” Solas reminds her. “A simple change such as that would barely be noticed.”

“That’s good.”

 

"Are we really planning _interior design_ when we have some – ancient magister to defeat?”

“We cannot win a war on our own, my dear,” Vivienne says. “We need allies, and do not underestimate the importance of appearance in winning them.”

“Grand as this fortress is, it needs repairs, and people will flock to us as they did in Haven,” Josephine adds. “So yes. Interior design.”

Vivienne and Josephine live in a world that Ra will never understand, and she respects them greatly for it, but she needs to go find Cullen and Cassandra, the straightforward people, the ones who know how to hit things. “Please keep the curtains and tapestries to a minimum,” she says, because she can’t stop them. “And make them heavier, not so easily ripped or moved by someone walking by.”

“Not so easily caught on a horn?” Vivienne asks with a smile.

“Well we _are_ in the middle of the mountains,” Josephine muses, “in a stone castle. It will be drafty, and heavier fabrics will help with that.”

 

“What is this,” Ra asks, and no one answers, because no one else is in her quarters with her. _“What is this?”_

A bed – with curtains? It sounds like a joke to torment qunari.

 

_"Vashedan!”_ Bull yelps, and Ra crosses the grand entrance hall to him. He takes a few steps back and the curtain moves with him, loose threads caught around a horn. “Why do we have these, Boss?” he asks.

“Josephine insisted,” Ra says mournfully. “Did I tell you that some Orlesian sponsors, or _something,_ gave me a _bed_ that has curtains?”

“Humans,” Bull grunts.

_“Orlesians,”_ Ra growls, and Bull huffs an agreement.

 

“I’m going to drink a glass of champagne for every time I hear the word  _ox,”_ Ra announces. Cassandra sighs and Josephine shakes her head.

“Please do not, my dear,” Vivienne says. “We need you clear-headed tonight.”

Even if she had been inclined to make a drinking challenge out of it, she only hears _ox_ once. The rest of the insults are simply so much more  _creative._ “Is that someone’s _pet?”_ a shocked noblewoman gasps when she is barely within the outer gates.

Inside the castle, it is loud, but Ra still fears echoes and has to bend low to whisper to Josephine, “I am going to ruin every fucking curtain in this fucking shithole of a palace." 

 

"Mother never mentioned you were a qunari.”

“Really?” Ra asks, and she glances around the garden to see who this small child’s mother might be. She hasn’t been around children in a very long time and even if she is 'Andraste’s Herald’ there’s still bound to be some overzealous mother who thinks that the big bad qunari is going to eat her child if Ra keeps talking to him. “Usually that’s all anyone ever notices, what with the horns.”

“I noticed your blood,” the boy says. “It doesn’t belong to your people.”

If anything is proof of a higher power, the Maker or the gods of the elves, it is Ra managing to stay her tongue and neither swear in front of a small child nor ask Morrigan what the fuck is wrong with her son. 

 

“You were wrong,” Bull says, smacking a stick into a practice dummy, “about how Tal-Vashoth sleep. My experience is, they don’t.”

Ra thinks of her mercenaries, many of whom still have Qunlat names – job titles – because they don’t know what else to call themselves, because they don’t know what else they _are._ Ra thinks of her parents. Some chains aren’t all ever broken. She thinks of a dreadnaught sinking along the coast. She puts a hand on his shoulder. “You will,” she says. “It’ll take time, but you will.”

A Qunari who spent time fighting beside and drinking with Tevinters, mages, and Tevinter mages was already more Tal-Vashoth than Qunari, anyway.

 

“Fearlings,” Solas says. “The least powerful of the fear demons. You perceive them as whatever you most fear.”

Hawke’s face is bloodless in the green light of the Fade. Ra imagines that she looks much the same, having just cut down the manifestation of herself, collared, chained, on a leash, with lips sewn shut. 

“You really think,” the Nightmare asks, “that the Qunari will be content to let you go, if you win? You think they will tolerate the _bas_ revering a  _saarebas?_ You squandered both a powerful alliance and your future freedom when you let that dreadnaught burn for the sake of a dozen friendly faces. You can neither run nor hide from the Qun.”

 

“What’s your thing about dragons? Is that… all the Qunari, or just you?”

Not that Bull is a Qunari anymore, but he doesn’t correct her. The distinction doesn’t matter so much now that they’re both the same. “What, your Tal-Vashoth don’t have that? They’re the closest thing to sacred we – the Qunari, got. Kinda look like them more than most people, right? With the horns.”

“Better than being an ox,” Ra agrees.

“There’s a few of the Ben-Hassrath, though, with this crazy old theory. You know the Tamassrans control who we mate with, right?”

Ra nods. “Like you’re cattle. Get the optimal breed for the job they want you to have.” She’s heard all about it. 

“So we’re thinking, what if they mixed in some dragon a long time ago?” Bull asks, and he leans in like he’s telling a secret or maybe he just doesn’t want the rest of the tavern to hear and think they’re crazy. “Drink the blood, or some magic shit, I don’t know. But that dragon we killed today…” He sits back. “Something about it spoke to me.”

Ra thinks of Morrigan’s son, and she takes a long drink of whatever piss-and-fire alcohol that Bull has poured for them, in order to stop thinking.

 

“Watch this!” Sera shouts, somewhere on the upper balcony level of the entrance hall, and with the echoes Ra isn’t sure where she is until she bounds over the railing and swings down to the floor on one of the huge curtains.

“That is not their intended use, madame,” Ra tells her when she approaches, grinning.

“Oh, posh, what then? Qunari nets? Bet you’d get right tangled if you tried that.”

“I get tangled enough _without_ trying that.”

Sera grins.

 

She has an argument with Solas about her decisions entirely in elvish, and neither of them notice until Dorian descends from the floor above and asks, rightly, _what the fuck._

There’s a history in her head, a thousand years of knowledge, that isn’t her own, because elves and qunari both have pointed ears but that’s where the similarity ends. Ra doesn’t know the Dalish well, but she knows of their desire to gain back their past, their traditions, their civilization; and Ra doesn’t understand, because she and her people have only been trying to run from their civilization. She requests bundles of parchment anyway and puts the wispy floating thoughts that she can catch down on paper, to both free some space in her head and give back something that she stole, however necessary it was.

 

“What do they call you?” Corypheus thunders, and Ra drops beneath a rock and staunches a cut on her leg. Solas, grim and determined, is beside her, and she looks about for Cassandra and Varric. “Qunari? Your blood is _gorged_ with decay! You are not a race; you are a _mistake!”_

She thinks of Kieran’s words, she thinks of Bull’s dragons, and she throws herself back out into the open, a fireball to Corypheus’ back, and shouts, “I’m _Vashoth,_ you _vashedan_ fuck!” because sometimes arbitrary semantic distinctions are all that she has.

 

She can’t wipe blood and sweat and dirt off of her face because it’s on her hands and clothes too; demon guts and dragon blood and all other manner of nastiness. There’s a broken orb and then she’s looking to see that Cassandra and Varric are all right and then she looks back for Solas, ready to ask him if she has dragon innards stuck to her horns.

 

“The only disappointing thing about you not being Ben-Hassrath anymore,” Ra says, accepting a drink from Bull and wondering whether it’s that same horrific stuff that they drank after killing a dragon – it would be appropriate, since they killed Corypheus’ dragon, but she wants to be conscious for this party, “is that there’s no one to send all the details back to Par Vollen about how a Vashoth saarebas saved the whole damn world without their fucking help.”

Josephine lavishly decorated for the party, which Ra suspects is the only way she knows how to relax. The heavy curtains have been swapped for something nicer and Ra, who’s memorized how to navigate this hall until it was just changed on her, nearly tears them down into a table of tiny Orlesian cakes, and then she has to wait for Josephine to stop giggling to come and save her.


End file.
